


Five Years later

by Lilili_cat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-25 16:52:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19749847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilili_cat/pseuds/Lilili_cat
Summary: It's been five years since Tobirama has been banished, and no one has seen him...An AU inspired by Martesh'sRipples.





	1. Missing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Martesh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Martesh/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Ripples](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19382323) by [Martesh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Martesh/pseuds/Martesh). 



**Missing**  
  
  
The first sighting happens right after the village is built.

It is neither Uchiha nor Senju who sees it, but a young Shimura, newly turned 16, curiously exploring the riverbanks of his new home. He is absently fingering a river rock he'd picked up earlier, inquisitive dark eyes roaming the rushing waters of the Naka and wondering where the best location to skip it would be when he sees him.

A beautiful boy, on the cusp of change, with hair like snow and eyes of ruby, as pale as the full moon hanging right above him and draped in a long white fine kimono and an odd too-large shawl of ivory fur over his slender shoulders.

He is so startled he drops the rock and takes a wary step back.

“A-are you one of the Hatake?” he asks. The coloring is similar but those red eyes...

He doesn't think he's ever seen eyes that red outside of the spinning eyes of the famous Uchiha clan.

The boy smiles and shakes his head, and the young Shimura thinks he hears tinkling laughter, almost like what he imagines a Tennyo must sound like. The boy holds up a single finger to his lips, his lips curling as if about to share a secret before, right in front of the Shimura's shocked wide eyes, he leaps into the river with a single bound.

Shimura jumps towards the riverbank, his heart in his throat, desperately scanning for a little body, a piece of sodden white fabric, _anything_...but he sees only the rushing waters.

He runs all the way home after that, stopping for neither rest nor food nor the called out greetings of his new neighbors.

The next day, when he doesn't greet his parents, they go looking for him and find him still asleep in his bed, thrashing with fever. They beg the new hokage, the finest healer in all of Hi no Kuni, to help, but even his skills cannot tame the heat eating away at his body.

In the end, the young Shimura is only able to murmur feverishly about a pale red eyed boy once before he falls to the bed, insensate.

That night, he cries out about abandonment and seem not to see his parents beside his futon nor hear their pitiful pleads for him to wake up and to return to them. Despite his parent's prayers, he does not rise the next morning.

-~&~-

The second sighting happens a month later.

A Hatake woman has gone to wash her clothes by the banks of the river when a fish leaps up, tangles into her shirt and swims away with it in a flash of silver scales. Quick as a viper, she leaps to her feet, kunai flying from her hand to skewer the fish through (and rescue her shirt) when a small rock diverts her weapon.

She stands up, whirling to face whoever would interfere so...but she stops at the sight before her.

A lovely boy, similar to the coloring of her own clan but with such red, red eyes...

(Although she doesn't think even her people are quite so pale...)

“Are you lost?” she asks him, ignoring the unease prickling up her spine. He's just a boy, not yet even changed into a man, not yet even hit his growth spurt. Surely there can be no danger here...

(She should have listened to her instincts.)

The boy smiles and shakes his head. He laughs, a high, light _wrong_ laugh, and the uneasy feeling strengthens, until she feel as if she must fight or flee or... Her heartbeat quickens as his blank red eyes stares right at her and she clenches her hand around her spare kunai, her first having been lost to the boy's pebble, prepared to defend herself if he should attack, as ludicrous a thought as that is.

But those eyes, those clear, red, blank eyes, boring into her as if he were seeing _through_ her...and her hand shakes from where it's clenched so tightly around her kunai and her heartbeat is so quick she is certain she will faint—

He opens his mouth, pale pink lips parting, as if to say something.

She leans forward, straining to hear him, straining to make out his words...

...and then he steps back and falls backwards into the river.

She rushes forward with a cry, searching the river frantically for a small white-clad body...but she finds nothing.

A day later, she dies of a fever, a nightmarish cry about abandoned little boys the last thing to escape from her mouth.

-~&~-

It's after the third sighting that Madara as the new Hokage's top advisor gets involved.

Three mysterious deaths, all precipitated by quick and unusually hot fevers...As if they were all _eaten up_ during the night. Even Hashirama's unparalleled skills as a medic does nothing to stay the deadly sickness. They all died after visiting the banks of the Naka river, and they all died rambling incoherently about abandoned boys. 

A Shimura, a Hatake and now...one of his own clan members.

He doesn't want to get involved, he really doesn't. Hashirama needs him. The village is harder to run than either of them remembered it from the first time around, small details kept getting dropped, Zetsu is still out there and...and his friend hasn't been the same since five years ago. Since that _incident_.

But what can he do? People are dying. _His_ people are dying.

And he swore he wouldn't lose anyone else after...

The door to his newly grown office opens, and he looks up to see Izuna walk in.

“Aniki,” his little brother says, his face unusually dark and solemn. “Are you investigating the...?”

He nods. There's little use in denying it to his sharp-eyed little brother. He's a young man now, just about full-grown, and he's only gotten sharper over the years

His little brother hisses at that. “It's dangerous. This must be supernatural. You should take me with—”

“—No!” he says, firmly.

Then, at Izuna's flat stare, “No,” he repeats, more gently. “I need someone to stay here. To—”

“—You mean you want me to stay out of danger,” his brother narrows his eyes at him.

Madara doesn't deny it.

Ever since he obtained that injury five years ago...he hasn't been as adept on the battlefield. He's not as quick, not able to do as much. And Madara will always love and worry over his little brother.

(He's already lost him, once upon a time.)

“I need someone to stay near Hashirama and makes sure he doesn't do anything stupid,” Madara says instead. “You know how he is...he's desperate for any sort of news.”

Izuna searches his face with narrowed eyes, before he sighs and looks away. “Fine,” he says finally. “I won't go with you. I'll stay here and watch over our Hokage and make sure he doesn't drink himself into a stupor or go haring off after rumors again.”

Madara lets out the breath he had been holding in relief.

Good.

Having both Izuna away from danger and Hashirama watched over...it gives him comfort.

Kami-sama knows there is little to be found in these days.

They finally have their peace, but it is a broken, fractured thing. A poor distorted mirror of what it should have been.

If only...

_Perhaps Madara had been too quick to only see the boy's older self. Perhaps he had not been always truthful with himself about his own faults and his own role in his little brother's death in their previous life._

_(Madara was ever capable of denial and delusion.)_

_But once he had seen the little boy's tears, once that little child turned his back and walked away from him, and he faced Hashirama's devastated face when they received the letter only a few months later..._

_He'd disappeared on the way to Uzu no Kuni. He never reached the Senju's Uzumaki cousins._

_Everyone needed to face the truth sometime, and for him, it was then._

_That little boy was the initial tie he had to Hashirama. Protecting little brothers...that was what they originally dreamed about. The very reason they wanted to build a village in the first place._

_(He'd always seen him as a man, as the man who stole his own brother from him. But, faced with that thin, small form, the narrow little shoulders positively dwarfed in the too-big fur shawl, his eyes full of hot tears and all semblance of his cool, collected adult self stripped away...Madara saw him clearly for the first time. And he felt hot shame burn through his belly and eat away at his heart.)_

_Through their unwitting, thoughtless actions, they'd chased him away, an innocent, lonely little boy who'd done nothing wrong._

_They took everything from him, and drove him off into the wide, wide world, with just the small provisions in his pack and the skills his small 11 year old self had managed to master._

_(Not enough. Not the genius of Madara's memories. Not the Oni of the Senju. Just a small boy, lonely and lost without his big brother.)_

_They agreed to look for him at that point, all three of them, Hashirama, Madara and Izuna. They would work to build their village and make it a safe place for him, for all little brothers. And then they will find Hashirama's lost little brother, and they will bring him home._

-~&~-

He interviews the families of the victims, and there is little information that he does not already know. The Naka river. Mutterings about abandoned little boys. Fever.

There's not much to go on, but there is one thing.

Each demise happened just a night or two after the full moon. Each demise happened a moon apart.

And while other people have already scoured the riverbank...it's the first time a new full moon will appear since Uchiha Hikaru perished.

And so he goes to the banks of the river itself on that very night, searching for a clue, searching for something that can tell him why three such different people, from three separate clans, different sexes, different ages, different experiences, all met their demise through fever after visiting the banks of the river.

He's scanning the river, sharingan whirling in his eyes, his chakra infused to sense enemies, kunai gripped in his hand and... The breath catches in his throat.

It...It can't be.

“Tobirama.”

The boy turns to him from where he stands on the banks of the river, still just that little slip of a boy who disappeared into the trees those five years ago, red eyes wide and sad and brimming with tears and...

(Something's not right. Something's very, very wrong about all this.)

“Tobirama, your brother is looking for you,” he coaxes to the white-clad figure, holding his hand out tentatively.

“Anija?” comes the thin reed-like whisper, and Madara frowns. Has the younger Senju's voice always been like that? So...insubstantial? “Where is Anija?”

“He's waiting for you, in the Hokage tower.” Madara swallows. “We built this village for you, for Izuna. For all the children. So we can protect all of you.”

Even if they haven't done such a great job of it. Even though Izuna is somewhat crippled from his injury five years prior, and Tobirama...Tobirama's been gone, _disappeared_ for that same amount of time. It's truly a miracle that he's appeared here and now, right as their new village is up and running (not as smoothly as before, the administration not as well-oiled, the cracks starting to appear even at the very beginning).

“I-I'm sorry, Tobirama,” he says. “You said back then that I took your brother from you, and...I truly didn't mean to. I wasn't thinking. I'm older and should have known better.”

The little boy tilts his head as if in question. “How should you have known better?”

Madara shakes his head. “I'm much older than I look...your brother too. I have memories of things that haven't happened, will _never_ happen now, and they scarred me. It's not excuse for what I wrought, but...”

But he is sorry.

He knows too well the pain of losing one's last brother, and that's something he never even wanted to inflict on the adult version of this boy, let alone the innocent child he is now.

He stares at Tobirama's white kimono for a moment, stares at the familiar ivory fur shawl around those thin small shoulders—his friend had been waiting to give that to his little brother...he'd wanted to wait for the boy's 18th birthday. He's lost in thought. (White hair and white skin and a white raiment and blood red eyes. So much white and red...)

“And Anija?” Tobirama prompts.

Madara swallows. “He is sorry too. He's sorry that he let you two drift so far apart...and he's been looking to make amends.” He takes a step forward as if to grasp the child, but Tobirama steps back, away from him, and Madara forces himself to stop.

He doesn't want to scare him off. If he runs away...if he disappears again...

“Hashirama has been looking for you,” Madara admits. “Once he received the news that you never reached Uzu, he's been...consumed.”

Consumed with a restless determination to find his missing brother, to overturn the edict that had him banished and to bring him back. And once a full year passed...and then another...and then another, Madara watched as, slowly, his hope died and sorrow perpetually dimmed his eyes.

Hashirama is forlorn these days, sinking deeper and deeper into his cups in a vain attempt to remember the lost brother he can find no whisper of. (Madara knows the feeling well. And he feels guilt consume him each time he regards his friend's state.)

But now that Tobirama is here, he can correct his old mistakes. They can start anew, all of them. Madara and Hashirama and Izuna and Tobirama. The way it should have been, from the very beginning. Two devoted older brothers and the little brothers they love and want to keep safe and whole.

“He misses you. He misses you dearly—won't you come with me? I will take you to him. I promise.”

The small pale (almost bloodless, almost the same color as the huge moon behind him) reaches out to him, and he reaches out in turn, ready to grasp his hand and—

“Stay away from Aniki, Youkai!”

Madara whirls around, shocked to see Izuna behind him. How had his little brother snuck up on him? ...When had he stopped infusing chakra and sensing?

“Izuna?”

But his little brother only has eyes for the small form in front of them.

“Izuna, what...?”

His little brother snarls. “Tell me, Aniki, how old is Senju Tobirama in relation to me?”

Madara blinks.

“Hashirama always said he was around a year younger...” he trails off and looks at the small white-clad form in front of them with horror.

Senju Tobirama looks no older than 11. And Izuna is almost a full-grown man now.

(Senju Tobirama had only been 11 when he'd been banished from the Senju five years ago.)

“Then,” he whispers, his stomach like a pit of dread inside of him.

“It's a cruel youkai who is toying with us by taking Senju Tobirama's face.” On the last word, Madara's little brother hurls his kunai, cursing when it goes harmlessly through— _through_ —the child completely, as if there was nothing there.

The...the thing wearing Tobirama's form flickers and then disappears, and Madara hears a distant splash. He shivers, remembering the sad wide red eyes, the too-thin, too-small shoulders under the too-big shawl...a gift his friend had been forced to give far too early.

He shivers and...he feels faint. A heat rising in him that shouldn't be.

He swallows. The youkai's curse...it's affecting him now and if he doesn't kill it, if he doesn't stop it, it will continue to kill people...including him.

“Aniki?” his brother calls to him, his voice concerned, and Madara tears himself away from his thoughts with effort. “The youkai...did it...?”

Weary, he nods. “Yes, I am cursed.”

His brother mutters an oath. “Then we must kill it. I won't lose you, Aniki! I won't! Especially not to that, that _thing_ that decided to use Senju Tobirama's face!”

He smiles and nods at Izuna, but he's still distracted by something. What, he can't say. Some little detail that he's overlooking...some small thing that's important. But what? (What is he missing?)


	2. Found

**Found**  
  
  
They scour the riverbanks for any hint of a sign, their senses laid out, feeling every breeze, every minute fluctuation in chakra, ears pricked to catch any noise.

Nothing.

And time slowly ebbs away.

Madara feels the movement of each grain of sand in the hourglass of time acutely, knowing that each trickle means a little less life in him, knows that if too much passes him by, he'll be dead. He can already feel the beginning of the fever eating through him, bit by bit, a voracious unbanked flame that is, for once, outside of the control he has with all katon. It is burning him up, draining him of vitality and...there's not much time left. There's not much time until he's lost, and it's too late for him.

How ironic, that it's a heady fiery rush of fever that will take him, instead of cool rushing Suiton or sharp claws of Raiton.

His brother's eyes are wet with tears, and he's frantically examining each plant and pebble, overturning every rock and even wading out into the river despite slipping and falling a few times— “Aniki, Aniki we must hurry. We must dig out the youkai and kill it. I won't lose you, I won't!” —but, for once, Madara feels calm.

He contemplates the dark waters of the Naka river, watching as the moon descends slowly, centimeter by centimeter. He watches silently, a deep pool of tranquility, his fires banked for the first time, as his brother rushes over to the far end of the river and searches there, roudning a bend for a few moments and then returning, a desolate bitterness on his face.

Perhaps it's that he's already died once and has been reincarnated. Perhaps it's the life he's lived, once upon a time, misery dogging his every footstep, the loss of his precious, precious little brother making each each waking moment like broken shards of the glass that hasn't been invented yet digging into his heart, a kaleidoscope of pain that he was forced to endure just for the hope of righting the world's wrongs. Perhaps it's the guilt that follows him these days, the knowledge that the blame for their current grief can be laid squarely at his feet.

He's screwed up last life, he's screwed up this life, and if this is the end for him, if he can't be around to mess things up anymore, then...

Hashirama drowns in his own grief and loneliness, Madara might soon die of this fever that a cruel youkai who stole a familiar face invoked upon him—and how fitting, that it be Tobirama's face to send him to his death, the face of the boy whose life he had destroyed—but Izuna, at the least, will be safe this time.

(It's not what he would wish for...but it's what he would settle for.)

(And maybe that's okay.)

“It's okay, Izuna,” he tries to reassure his panicking brother. “It's okay.”

There's only a few hours left while the moon is still out, before the sun rises and eclipses it, and Madara knows, deep down in his bones, that it will be too late once the moon turns her face from them.

“No, it's not!” Izuna turns from him abruptly, turning his wet face to the unheeding rush of the river, but Madara can still see those slender shoulders shake. He's reminded of another pair of fragile shoulders shaking as sobs wrack the small form, just five years ago, the last time he or anyone saw that small child, and he wonders again if this isn't somehow Tobirama's revenge on him.

An elder brother for an elder brother.

(A fitting trade.)

“Izuna...”

A not-quite choked, not-quite stifled sob answers him. “You're leaving me, abandoning me. I don't want to be alone...”

Sobs wrack that much loved figure and while Madara is content to die here, now...his brother...

He cannot leave his brother like this.

Izuna is too old for comfort now. He's grown up, and he says he doesn't need his Aniki to watch over him anymore. But Madara will always be his Aniki regardless. And the one thing he can always lay claim to, the one thing he's never messed up is...

He walks up to his brother on silent feet, wading into the swift rushing waters himself, and embraces those shaking shoulders with his strong arms, holding his precious little brother, his Otouto, to his chest and riding out the younger man's sobs together with him.

“Aniki is here, Otouto,” he whispers to the shaking, slender body of the young man who is more dear than anything else in the world to him. “Aniki is here.”

He kisses the crown of that dark head, smoothing back the fine silken strands just like he used to do when they were children, just like he did when he returned and saw his Otouto, alive and splendid and all of eight again, just like he did when the medics fussed over the injury Tobirama gave him, and Madara had been so, _so_ scared he'd lose him again, that all his work to come back into the past had been for naught because he couldn't bring himself to kill a little boy. Just like he did when he'd returned from seeing a tiny fur-swathed pair of shoulders turn from him, disappearing into dark forest, and he'd been so, so scared that his own brother might feel like that someday, that he would still somehow lose him.

“Aniki can't promise to always be here,” he continues hoarsely, his own tears sliding down hollow cheeks and dripping into the fine dark hair. “Aniki can't promise to live. But Aniki can be here _now_ , in this moment. Aniki...”

He hugs his precious little brother to him, the little brother he's destroyed the world for, the little brother he turned back time for...and the little brother he destroyed another innocent little life for.

The slender body in his arms shifts unevenly, favoring the left side, and Madara closes his eyes in the remembrance of it, in the pain of the knowledge that this, too, was because of him.

“Aniki hasn't always made good choices,” he admits. “I've been stupid and blind and selfish...and you suffer because of it. If I hadn't been so stubborn...”

What would the world have been like, what would this second chance have been like, if he could have set his anger aside? If he trusted Hashirama more, if he brought Tobirama into their confidence and taught the younger Senju not to fear them...Izuna wouldn't have gotten hurt, Tobirama would never have left, their village would be like before except _better_ and Hashirama...Hashirama wouldn't be trying to drink himself into an early grave.

Perhaps he would still have been cursed by a youkai. Or perhaps a more whole Hashirama, a present and brilliant Tobirama, and an Izuna more prone to smiles than the frowns that dotted their lives would have found a solution. Would have discovered the youkai earlier and prevented the three deaths that brought him to his point.

He swallows, the possibilities bitter in him...if only they could turn back time again and redo it all over.

But they were allowed only this single second chance. And they've squandered it.

Izuna sniffles in his arms, and Madara tightens his arms.

Well, perhaps not wholly squandered. Mostly.

“Aniki did stupid things, Otouto...but never doubt that Aniki loves you. I would stay with you if I could but...”

“Would you? Would you really stay with me?”

“I would.”

“You won't abandon me, Anija?”

Madara blinks.

Anija. Izuna's never called him that. He's only ever heard that used by...

Madara leaps back in surprise, but it's too late. Wide, large red eyes set on a too pale, too thin face and small, slender but _strong_ arms pull him down, down, down into the cool rush of the river and...

And he can hear Izuna's shouting in the distance.

-~&~-

_“Anija,” the little boy calls out, feverish, delirious and weak, shaking, shivering, shuddering, sobbing as lightning splits the sky in a loud bright crack. “Anija!”_

_But no one comes. No one's come for years now. He's been abandoned for another little boy at the river. That little boy became a pair of little boys who are better than he is in every way and infinitely more lovable—why else would he be left behind—and he doesn't have his Anija's warm hugs anymore, or his Anija's tender kisses. Or even his Chichi-ue's approval._

_(He has nothing. He is nothing.)_

_All he has are memories of his Anija's tears as he's turned away. All he has are memories where they say they love him, but they set him loose out in the forest and tell him to leave anyway...tell him to leave, to run, to not come back because he committed a crime he still doesn't quite understand and..._

_The world spins around him, and he flops over onto his belly, dizzy and confused and suddenly so, so thirsty._

_Water. He needs water._

_There's water raining all about him, drenching him, soaking him all through his shivering form, but..._

_It's not enough._

_He crawls on his belly, parched despite the pouring rain, heat emanating off his tiny, trembling little form. He crawls and crawls and crawls, his fingers scrabbling at the hard, rocky ground, scrambling to find enough purchase to pull himself along. His fur shawl—Anija's last gift—catches on a large rock on the way and whips away from him from the strong wind, buffeted by them until it falls into the water, its muddied and soaked form carried away by the raging currents._

_He's so close now. So close._

_So close to Uzu no Mizu, but that's not where he wants to be. He wants to be home, with Chichiue and Anija. He wants to be with them, but...he can't come back. They told him not to come back. They said they loved him and then told him not to come back. How can they love him if he can't come back? How can Anija love him if he hasn't looked at him for three years now?_

_(He's nothing now. Less than nothing.)_

_He looks at the rushing currents and...almost there._

_He's so thirsty, but he'll be able to drink soon. He pulls himself along, his fingernails tearing off and his tender belly scraped raw by the sharp rocks littering the ground. So close. So close. Just a few meters more._

_He's shuddering violently as he finally reaches the water's edge._

_He's shivering uncontrollably when he reaches down to cup some water to drink._

_He stops shaking as he falls in and drowns, his last words a cry for his “Anija.”_

-~&~-

“Aniki!” He hears, as if through layers and layers of cotton and hemp. “Aniki!”

Slender but strong hands haul him up, and he's choking, spluttering, spitting out the water that had rushed into his mouth.

“Izuna?”

Those hands shake him. The black eyes are wild with terror. “Aniki! Don't do that again! Don't do that to me! If you die...”

He breathes slowly, trying to make sense of everything.

“Wh-what happened?” he asks, his teeth clattering. His tilts his head up, eyeing the sky, noting the sun just cresting the horizon. He gulps. “Is it too late? Did we...”

Izuna lets out a sigh, almost _shaking_ in his relief. “I found him. I got rid of him. Aniki—”

Madara bolts up, or tries to. “Let me see,” he orders. He needs to see...he needs to know...

Izuna looks at him grimly. “Aniki, it's not...it's not what we thought. It's...”

Madara shakes his head. “Please, Izuna. I need to see. Please.”

With pursed lips, Izuna slowly helps him to his feet and then leads him to the opposite bank, careful not to take too many falls on the way, despite the fast currents. He leads him to a little break in the riverbank, reeds and watergrass clogging a little muddy area.

“Izuna?” Madara asks, questioning.

Izuna looks away from him and carefully parts the reeds. “I used a seal and banished him. What's left is...” He swallows thickly. “It's been picked clean,” he admits solemnly. “But it's most definitely _him_.”

At first, Madara isn't sure what he's looking at. But as he stares at the strange round stone with the tangled mess of rags around it and watches as Izuna carefully lifts it out of its muddy home, delicately wiping away the dirt from it and the cloth, he realizes...

(The boy's kimono was folded right side over the left. That's what he'd missed.)

It's a skull. An adolescent's skull. An adolescent's skull tangled in matted, rotting mess of what was once ivory furs.

-~&~-

They never find the rest of the body. Just the skull and the rotten remains of the fur that had once been Hashirama's last gift to his brother. Izuna thinks he must have died somewhere far upriver and then drifted down. The fish had likely eaten his body within a month.

The news breaks Hashirama entirely. They'd never had a chance of bringing his lost little brother home. He'd died before he even turned 12.

The next full moon, the ghost claims its last victim. Hashirama jumps into the river to reunite with his little brother.

They don't find his body either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone confused (mostly because I wanted this to be a short thing, so I ended up rushing it a bit...), Tobirama did drown but mostly because he was severely sick, weak and delirious and fell in. He basically fell towards the beginning of the river, and then drifted down (they got unlucky in that his skull came to rest close to Konoha right before it was built). For anyone wondering why his ghost was in funeral attire, it's mostly symbolic. It's not really what he died in (no one buried him, he even lost the fur shawl that his brother gave him right before he died). It's more of what the state of mind of the ghost would have.
> 
> And yes, it's a wrongful-death/vengeful type ghost. I was debating between that and hone-onna type (partially inspired by Jigoku Shoujo's hone-onna).


End file.
